Daku Con may have been back in November, but I am still thinking about it all this time later. As a life long convention goer, I can honestly say it is one of the most unique experiences that a patron can have with your fellow nerds in the Denver, CO area. If you seek asylum in a very open, very sex, identity, and sexuality positive environment, then look no further than Daku Con! You can find our full review of the event here!
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Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con may have been back in November, but I am still thinking about it all this time later. As a life long convention goer, I can honestly say it is one of the most unique experiences that a patron can have with your fellow nerds in the Denver, CO area. If you seek asylum in a very open, very sex, identity, and sexuality positive environment, then look no further than Daku Con!
While not the biggest convention in this area, Daku Con certainly has things going for it that no other convention shares. The 18 plus entry is something they utilize to the fullest.
Walking around The Radisson Hotel Denver Southeast with drinks in hand was a lot of fun. The encouragement to let loose, be yourself, and have a good time just feels dialed up here. Only the hardcore convention goers are tapped in to the know about this convention, and with a good word of mouth from the attendees, this experience will be much bigger as the years go on. The crowd is everything, and they just have great attendees there.
The staff was also extremely helpful and in plentiful amount. I found a helpful staff member in almost every area of the convention and that made finding rooms and asking questions extremely easy. You want to be able to easily navigate a convention and ensure you can see everything you set out to experience, and Daku Con makes that very simple. Schedules are in plentiful amount and the attractions they have really learn into the 18 plus portion of the convention’s identity.
Sit down and experience some Yaou X-Mas Songs, panels on relationships, talks on hentai, panels on sex-positive living, or have a nice interactive discussion on waifus/hubandos. 18 plus means no kids underfoot as well, so crafters can get away with quite a bit more in the cosplay realm. It was not uncommon to see attendees running around in themed underwear or banana hammocks, so keeping the kids out of this experience is a no brainer.
The dealer rooms are filled with phallic shaped objects and sex toys. The sexual jokes and inappropriate but hilarious antics run wild in this den of debauchery. Thankfully, the tenants of consent and ensuring everybody is comfortable kept negative experiences at bay. Daku Con staff went out of their way to create a safe and accepting space. The registration table had free gender identifying buttons so you did not have to worry about pronouns all night.
The Raddison itself seemed newly renovated with a very accepting staff. The interior was nice, and the rooms were great, but as this con grows, it will surely have to move to a bigger venue. However this year, the Raddison was perfect for the amount of attendees and attractions that occupied the building. The amount of con goers end up working in the convention’s favor, because you keep running into the same friendly faces which creates a much more intimate experience.
The acceptance of drinking hotel wide was quite the treat. Everybody respected the hotel and the rules, and in turn the staff members gave us plenty of freedom to have fun. Wristbands would allow you to drink while walking around and there was never a moment of hassle or explaining. It all worked out quite well!
There was a lot of great cosplay this year but My Hero Academia truly was the most represented. Persona 5 and Final Fantasy XV was also in plentiful amount but the variety was still great! The best parts of a con is dressing us as Kazuma Kiru from Yakuza and Todoroki from My Hero, and running into Guts from Berserk, and Chie from Persona. You wont get an experience like that anywhere else…and throw in an adult crowd and a few drinks and you have endless possibilities of fun!
Daku Con offers plenty of ways to spend time, from the arcade with free games, to the plentiful amount of workshops and panels. You’ll be hard pressed to find a boring moment. The real star of the con was Yokubou Lounge, an 18+ host club that cosplays. The girls and guys there hosted some very memorable panels with plenty of audience interaction, and hosted a game night that was just a real highlight of the whole weekend. Hope you are not easily embarrassed by things such as lubed dildo tug-of-war, and hentai based trivia games!
Friday night they held a wizard ball, like a Harry Potter themed type of affair. It is always interesting getting a bunch of nerdy folk together, but it is the only place a room filled with some of your favorite characters from anime and games belt out Seal’s Kiss From a Rose at 100%. Dancing, drinking, singing, and all costumed up, it was quite the Friday night. Saturday night had the Not-Rave, so there was plenty of opportunities to bust your moves.
Saturday was the cosplay contest, and there were some great entries. A real stand out for me was BB Wolf from The Wolf Among Us. As we awaited the winner of the contest, the contestants called for music and gave us a bit of a dance party to help us through the wait. Everybody was always stepping up to start some fun, and you could find that in every corner of Daku Con.
I highly suggest hitting up Daku Con in 2019. It is something we will surely return to visit, and its something we hope to see more people at. It is an experience worth sharing, and it is easily the most unique and accepting convention in the Denver area.
Don’t forget to check out our photo coverage of the event!
Want more out from the underground?
The fastest way to hear more from us is to support our efforts by donating or get monthly perks by becoming a patron on Patreon!
Got an idea for a future debate? Let us know what you want to hear by joining our Discord server!
Follow us on Facebook or tweet to us @SubCultured using the hashtag #MasterDebaters!
Join us on our Twitch channel every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9PM CST!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel!
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Splitgate Arena Warfare
Splitgate Arena Warfare’s premise is simple and easily digestible — Halo plus Portal. And it really delivers on that idea with fluid gameplay, simple gun mechanics, and level designs that encourage the use of portals to outsmart your enemies. There’s special surfaces portals can adhere to, which makes movement on both offense and defense really interesting. If you’re trying to get at someone using a portal, you can open one up behind them and just shoot through it, pop through and take them down, or even shoot one across the map and use a high fall to launch you through the sky at your target since momentum is preserved. On defense , it’s easy to escape as long as you’re mindful of keeping your portals up at all times. The double edged sword of that is if you’re around portal-able surfaces, your enemies can also sneak up behind you. It’s fast paced, fun, and really does a great job in capturing the same feelings as Halo.
The developer’s targeting a PC release later this year.
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World of Horror
Ever read a Junji Ito comic and think “man I’d love to interact with that to be unsettled on a whole new level”? Well, want no more, World of Horror is a point-and-click adventure horror game based in a quiet Japanese town in which the old, eldritch gods are awakening. In the PAX South demo, we take control of a student investigating a friend’s claims about a tall woman carrying scissors with a big smile. You investigate the claims, explore the school and come across even more horrors. Your actions throughout the investigation determine what kind of ending you get, meaning multiple playthroughs may be required to get the ending you want. The interface is just like retro adventure games like Clock Tower and the art style is extremely stark — only having 2-4 colors of fidelity. The soundtrack is also killer, providing great ambiance to the game. If you liked Clock Tower, cosmic horror, or just being unsettled, World of Horror is for you.
World of Horror is coming to PS4, Switch, and PC later this year.
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JackQuest
JackQuest is a Metroidvania dungeon crawler about a young couple separated by the villainous orc Korg. As you plumb the depths of the underground caves, you’ll find upgrades for your gear that unlock new areas and help you build your arsenal before fighting your antagonist. The game feels similar to other platforms, but one of the best things is the ability to jump off walls. Not unlike Megaman X, you can jump up the side of one wall to gain height and the game take advantage of this by placing both vertical and horizontal enemies in your path, so you’ve got to be careful or moving too fast may cost you your life.
The game is coming out on Steam this month.
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Disjunction
Disjunction describes itself as a cyberpunk stealth-action RPG and that’s quite apt. Top-down cyberpunk Metal Gear Solid meets Hotline Miami is also pretty apt IMO. You play as three different characters with intertwining stories in 2048 New York City. In the demo, you’re sneaking into a building in order to steal a datapad. The tutorial level does a great job showing off your abilities and how to use them effectively. You can either stun baton or shoot enemies with a gun in order to eliminate them as a problem. Guns are loud and draw attention, but enemies can get up after some time with the stun baton. The devs say the game can be completed entirely nonlethally and some can even be completed without stunning a single enemy, which adds interesting complexity if you’re looking to squeeze more difficulty out of the game. Keep this game on your radar especially if you’re a fan of the cyberpunk genre or stealth games like MGS.
You can give the demo a whirl yourself by visiting their site at http://www.disjunction-game.com/. The game is slotted for release on Steam this year.
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Check out more of our coverage from PAX South 2019 or find additional convention coverage! Let us know what you think on Facebook or Twitter @SubCultured, and join in the conversation on our Discord channel!
Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Jump Force
Hey man, who DOESN’T wanna see Naruto get his lil’ whiskers kicked in by my boy Goku? Or see Luffy try to Gum Gum Pistol a shinigami? The premise of Jump Force is simple — let’s watch some of the most iconic characters in Shonen Jump do battle! Each player picks a roster of 3 characters and whoever has a character die first loses. The camera is interesting in that it picks a character to watch over the shoulder for the most part. It’s a really cinematic take on fighting games, but one that also has a bit of confusion, especially when 2 of the same character are on the field. The characters don’t have different outfits, so 2 Gokus are pretty easily confused. That being said, the combos your able to pull of are satisfying and switching characters trying to protect your health pool adds a dynamic to the fights that is really fun. There’s some issues with framerate consistency, though that may be ironed out by the time the full release comes. All in all, this is a really fun fighting game that doesn’t feel like a clone. Keep this game on your radar if you like Shonen Jump or just super want to watch Vegeta final flash the battousai himself.
Jump Force releases February 15th for PS4 and Xbox One.
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Skellboy
Ah man, guys. Skellboy’s just s’dang cute. The art style, as described by one of the people behind it, is “sprites that we’ve… chunkified.”
It works to great effect, creating a visual style that’s a mix between Cube World and Paper Mario. The game takes place in/around a castle as an evil warlock who was just rejected by the princess has resurrected the dead to take revenge. The only problem is, he accidentally resurrected you too — an ancient hero. So with your new skeleton body, you’ll set off to right the wrongs of the kingdom and kick that warlock’s tuckus.
A really neat mechanic the game provides is the ability to swap out your body parts for the ones of your enemies, which can provide extra abilities or do more damage, depending on whose body parts you pick. Couple that with the art style, really fitting retro-style sound track, and simple but fun combat mechanics, and you’ve got a recipe for an awesome action adventure game.
Skellboy will be coming out for Switch this summer.
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A Fold Apart
A Fold Apart is a papercraft puzzle game centered around an architect and their partner. The couple are in a long distance relationship and when the architect goes to sleep, they imagine having to solve puzzles to get to their partner. You can choose from one of two character models for both the architect and the parter — a more feminine character or a more masculine one. The gameplay is pretty straightforward — you can flip paper over, make folds in 2 different ways, and the goal is to create platforms to walk on to get to your partner. The final game will have more ways to keep the gameplay interesting, but even as it is right now, it’s a deeply endearing, cute little romance puzzler. If you’ve ever been in a long distance relationship, this game sincerely hits home in such a wholesome way. The music provides a relaxed, sincere environment and the characters really convey how much they love each other, which is what ties the whole game together.
A Fold Apart will be available later this year.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.Check out more of our coverage from PAX South 2019 below or find additional convention coverage! Let us know what you think on Facebook or Twitter @SubCultured, and join in the conversation on our Discord channel!
Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Devil May Cry 5, Young Souls, Magequit
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
Devil May Cry 5
Ready for more of the stylish hack-n-slash action game that continues to captivate? Dante’s back again trying to track down the source of a rash of attacks after being hired by the mysterious “V”. Nero is also back, working out of a mobile Devil May Cry agency housed in a dope van. The game brings back its kinetic gun/sword gameplay style with the added wrinkle of being able to use different Devil Breaker abilities with Nero’s robotic arm. These strong attacks are limited, but you can refill from items you find along the way. It’s an interesting addition since there’s a sort of economy for how desperate you are to use these strong attacks. And of course the huge boss fights are back. The demo of Devil May Cry 5 has you fighting a Goliath and has very Devil May Cry entry sequence. Fans of the series should look forward to the latest entry in the series.
You can catch Devil May Cry 5 this March 8th on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.Young Souls
Young Souls is the story of two teenagers abandoned by their parents. Not only do they feel outcast by their parents, but the townsfolk in their new home aren’t exactly welcoming. As long as they have each other though, everything should be fine. That is, of course, until they find a portal to another world and are the only ones who can save Earth. The game is a classic sidescroller beat-em-up where you start at the beginning of an area and beat enough bad guys to get to the treasure at the end. You can upgrade your gear with loot you find in each dungeon. The most remarkable thing about the game are the graphics — hand drawn 2D graphics and animations in a simple, but strong art style. It’s an absolute treat to look at. The gameplay is simple, but engaging and the only issues so far are lag spikes when in hectic combat. It’s not the greatest experience to try and pull off an attack, have the screen freeze for half a second, then be on the ground afterward. That being said, there’s not a release date for the game yet, so there’s still plenty of time to iron out the bugs. If you liked the Scott Pilgrim game or any classic beat-em-up, you’ll definitely love Young Souls.
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Magequit
Magequit is an arena brawler in which you and up to 9 of your friends face off as wizards trying to grow their beards the longest by eliminating competing wizards. Each round, wizards gain a new spell to use against their foes until every button has a spell mapped. When gaining a new spell, the wizard with the smallest beard gets to choose first, which has a rubberbanding effect, not allowing any player to get too far behind and have no hopes of catching up. The movement of the wizards is also relatively slow, adding tension and anxiousness to each match.
Magequit is a wonderful party game to add to any library, so much so that you should consider picking it up even if it’s just in early access right now.
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.Check out more of our coverage from PAX South 2019 or find additional convention coverage! Let us know what you think on Facebook or Twitter @SubCultured, and join in the conversation on our Discord channel!
Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
Daku Con 2018 Photo Gallery
Daku Con 2018 Convention Recap!
PAX South 2019: Splitgate Arena Warfare, World of Horror, JackQuest, and Disjunction
PAX South 2019: Jump Force, Skellboy, A Fold Apart
Nan Desu Kan 2018 Photo Gallery
PAX South 2019 is drawing nearer, and Sub Cultured will once again be there, keeping you up to date with the latest news from one of the south’s biggest gaming cons!
In 2004, the folks at Penny Arcade decided they wanted a show exclusively for gaming. Sure, comics, anime, and other nerd hobbies were cool, and those activities all had their own shows, so what about games? From that idea spawned a small 4,500 person event in Bellevue, Washington, focused on the culture and community that is gaming.
In lieue of a string of celebrity guests, the events at PAX conventions center around the gamers, with an exhibition hall full of publishers, developers, and table tops to be found at every turn of your head! Large booths include Sony, Bandai Namco, Discord, Mixer, Astro, and Tinybuild. While the large booths tend to dominate, the majority of the show floor is dedicated to representing smaller companies so be sure to support booths like Gunnar Optiks, Level 99 Games, and the PAX South Indie Showcase!
Beyond the huge expo hall full of games, tabletop, and console gaming rooms, there’s also a number of tournaments from console to PC, handhelds, and tabletop games. And of course there’s the PAX staples of the Omegathon, Penny Arcade Q&A, and Penny Arcade Make-A-Strip.
The panels this year also have a lot of really interesting topics. Notable events include, PAX 102: You’ve PAXed, But Maybe You Missed Some Things on Friday at 4PM in the Bobcat Theatre, Build Your Kingdom – Managing a Career in the Game Industry on Saturday at 2:30PM in the Cactus Theatre, and a quite a few panels to be found that put a larger focus on Dungeons and Dragons. You can print the full schedule of PAX South 2019’s programming here!
PAX South will be held Friday January 18th, 2019 – Sunday January 20th, 2019 and takes place at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which is conveniently located in the heart of San Antonio, Texas! Tickets are still available online, so come soak up some of the panels and programming, and be sure to say hi! Follow us on Twitter @SubCultured for live updates from the show floor or keep an eye on our convention coverage! Anything in particular we didn’t mention? Come join in the conversation and let us know on our Discord channel!
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Sub Cultured is Heading to DakuCon 2018!
